TROCADERO 1985
Part 1: The Promise She held it open with a shy smile that promised so much while saying so little. Come, she said, just go all the way up but I did not know if she meant the stairs or her legs. I watched her hips sway - or perhaps it was my head that oscillated drunkenly, thoughts clunking against the sides like loose change. It was The Cure or The Smiths - something hollow to match her eyeliner and her heart Part 2: The Crack Up I thought she might have worn earrings made of bone and there was a smell of sadness and the toilet door said « Sarah sucks dick » which was true in time - just not mine. And I still have my own teeth you know. My chat up lines may need work and two bags of pennies are all I ever won from the arcades. They’re all gone now though the taste of candy cigarettes still lingers and I am still looking for you - I am sure you are just around the corner on the next machine. Isaac is dead. That was all she said before she crumpled to the floor. There is no more of the story. That is all they can tell us, and we sit frozen at our desks, packing bags and locking the door. What colour were her lips when she passed out? I want to know. How wide or small were her pupils? How tall was she, how far did she fall? How cold did her blood run? Isaac is dead. Was it quick, like a gun, or were there stab wounds, did he grab his chest, his gut, was there blood, was there time to think or did his eyes go out and did he sink just like his mother did on her office floor when she heard the news that her son was no more? I know that death is waiting for them all, the young, the loved, the smart, the tough, the small, and we cannot outrun the knife or the gun, we cannot defeat time or decay but that does not mean we should stay in a place where the phone can ring on a normal day and a tinny voice can say: Isaac is dead. Alpha and Omega He is reading to me from Genesis: In the beginning, he whispers, the earth was formless and desolate. A dog is barking outside and darkness is encroaching slowly on the day with long raggedy fingers. Inside, tiny coloured scraps of paper stick to my toes. My daughter fidgets, tucking in her many creatures under a starry fleece, the fox with the puppy and the white cat with the grey. Her hair is gossamer. The sky is a dome, the sky is a one-way mirror, separating water from water, life from life, the waves are blue when it is blue, black when night settles on the land, the stormy sea reflecting thunder. I see Canada geese, beak first, pushing through the membrane of heaven, born stretched out in full flight. I see the first people rise, faces turned up towards their own reflection, radiant, beyond the clouds. It was not perfect, but it was good. Glory cannot be contained, it leaks through the punctures in the firmament. The air is dense and still. He is reading it right, with wonder and paradise, with mythical beasts, with awe. And so the whole universe was completed. Silence falls. My feet are covered with confetti and I leave the room. First published in Riggwelter, issue 21 FIRST KISS - ALMOST We were watching from the window, raucously sloshing wine into the gerberas below. He held her so lightly, like you might hold a cloud, as if she were barely real, or maybe it was him that was not quite there, vapour and mist, tethered by the breathless, dewy grass. His fingers twisted into her mermaid hair, hers rested on his shoulders as for a dance, eyes locked in this revelation, this condensing of longing, buried so long in daily pleasantries. Our giggles were lost, absorbed into the padded sky, we took quiet sips, embarrassed now at our crass intrusion on this most sacred of moments, the knife edge, poised between states, the catalyst for crystallisation, the puncture of the vacuum, the moment before the universe is born. First published in Fly on the Wall Press Webzine issue 2. 3 poems by Judith Kingston : And I Am Doing Just Fine, Done.Just Done. , Not Quite Ready A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Judith Kingston The Poets of 2021 Links from Other Sites part 1
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